


Around and Around

by foolhappy



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, because feelings, just a sweet lil drabble to cheer you up ♥
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-11 23:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3336776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolhappy/pseuds/foolhappy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>During long, dignified meetings, or as he stood for hearings, for speeches, for Chant giving, for ovations; after the dust of disputes hung muddy and fragmented in the air; in long, lonely shadows of the brightest, clearest days; in quiet moments between nothing at all— the King could be caught twisting his wedding band around and around and around.</i>
</p><hr/><p>In which a King misses his Queen, like a lot. (It's sappy and happy and has 0 net sads, I promise.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Around and Around

_One of these days, Your Majesty,_ a scribe had told him once in jest, _your finger is going to twist right off!_ The warning had been aimed to wheedle a smile from solemnity, and it had done so, for a moment. But still, during long, dignified meetings, or as he stood for hearings, for speeches, for Chant giving, for ovations; after the dust of disputes hung muddy and fragmented in the air; in long, lonely shadows of the brightest, clearest days; in quiet moments between nothing at all-- the King could be caught twisting his wedding band around and around and around. ****

She was still gone. Still.

Sometimes, when people asked about her, his jovial smile wasn't quite wide enough, or his eyes - made for laughing, some said - didn't crinkle in their usual way. Sometimes his words were more rock than steady; his breath more water than air.

But he endured. All Ferelden had to, through so much, so he stood tall and sure among them as best he could. He braved Orlesian balls, he weathered the Inquisition's wake of deeds and decrees, and he plowed, trenched, gathered, cobbled and mortared his country whole again alongside his every weary countryman. It was only right.

Nalia always did what was right-- even when it was hardest. Even when nobody, not even he, wanted to see it. Tougher than silverite and twice as gleaming, he had been there to see her bend beneath her titles; to see the perfect, chiseled planes of her creak and tremble and weep. Yet she always stood the taller the next dawn; always charged out the harder against the next danger. And so he twisted, twisted, twisted his ring between thumb and forefinger; around, around, around, and thought of her. Always, _always_ , thought of her. His light, his angel-- ever fighting, never failing; ever bruising, never breaking. An indestructible goddess.

It was enough, he told himself (after the prayers they used to say together, at the table they used to laugh over, in the bed they used to share) to be hers; to be each other's. That they were married-- _married!_ \-- and no matter how far, how long she stayed away, they were yoked together. Her burdens were his. And if miles and leagues and mountains and years yawning between them was one, then he would bear it, as she did.

Isn't that what Kings were for? In chess, the Queen is the sword. She is called far and wide away to strike, to defend, to labor and protect. She is might and valor and-- _perfect_. The King, oh, the King is only a heart. In his castle of ribs, he can only stay behind and thunder, and beat, and pray, and love. And he _loves_ \-- he is full with it, sick with it, weak with it. The Queen, of course, is everything, because the King is so easily tipped without her. And so she must stay away, always far, far away, with him far, far behind.

Sometimes, though... Sometimes the Queen comes home.

It was a normal, 'nother, terrible, tedious day spent with dignitaries, representatives, and clerics-- this time, though, fielding responses, complaints, advisements, and the gamut of crafty, wealthy, underhanded rioting about the reformed Circles. For hours, his face was hard but not unkind; his voice measured, leveraging, but neither clipped nor arguing; his shoulders straight, balanced, poised, unerring-- and his hands, behind his back so regally, turning his wedding band around, around, and around.

Maker's breath, but the years only got longer and the days only got harder. He felt the lines of age and effort bearing into him as the meetings dragged and _dragged_. He kept up his smile, his spirits, with memories of her. How it was in a dank, distant glen, lit from below by a snapping and hissing campfire, that she had first called him handsome. How it was on a cliff he had known too well, after a secret she very much hadn't, that she called herself lucky-- lucky because of _him_. How there was an empty space on a discreet shelf in the Denerim library, where an empty book had sat; a book with nothing more between its pages than a rose, dry and brittle and barely burgundy anymore, pressed reverently. How that book, that rose, must even now be pressing against her back, between her shoulders, reaching for her heart, as she trekked and traveled.

It was long after dusk when the meetings finally ended, and the distant sound of carriages and horses and footmen finally ceased. But it was one of those days, and the head butler must have seen it in the slope of his king's shoulders, for no servants came rushing in with a word, a missive-- another dire, pressing _need_. He pretended to be deaf as the smallest, sidemost servant's door clicked open just for a moment, and then closed almost silent as if in apology.

Barely, barely, Alistair reined a raw and weary breath into something like a kingly, thoughtful sigh. His mouth, heavy after years unpaired, lifted at another precious memory-- his own slurring voice, joking about being king, and how she had laughed. _Oh_ , her laugh.

 _Of all things,_  he thought, as he thought every day, every hour, a hundred times for all hundred pieces of her,  _I miss her laugh the most._  

And then he heard it-- quiet but ringing, beautiful as a secret; like if a silver bell could whisper.

"And you thought you couldn't lead," she said, and he _knew_  as a man in love always knows. 

He couldn't stand up fast enough, turn around fast enough-- his crown, taken off as soon as the last guest had turned his back, clattered loudly from the arm of the throne. 

His heart, his mind-- he tried to, started to, wanted to do a thousand things at once, but all he did was _look_. He drank the sight of her like a dying man-- a new-old cut across her cheek, healing nicely; the weather-wear but careful-care of her armor, her Warden armor; the smile-- the _smile_ \-- that tried to be teasing, tried to joke but, _oh_ , no no no.

He would have run to her, he would have _flown_ , he would have died to get to her across the world, across the Void, but he didn't have to. 

She was there.

"Nalia," he said, and it wracked him so perfectly to say it-- like a broken bone finally, finally, set right again. He folded himself over; held her like a dragon and its gold-- but beneath his thick, gleaming robes, the king shook like a man saved. His breath was hard and definitely not sobbing as he dug fingers too long empty into the metal that had so faithfully preserved beloved bones, flesh, skin. He might have prayed over it, but her arms were just as hard around his waist, her face pressing so earnestly into his neck, his shoulder-- rubbing and digging with her forehead, her nose; kissing buttons, buckles, silk, fur, and staining them with what definitely weren't tears.

"Nalia," he said again, and one hand was in her hair; running his fingers through sweat and knots and all of it just to _feel_ it-- to hold her the tighter to him. _Yes_ , it was the same, it felt the same; _she_ was the same, she was safe, she was _home_.

"Oh, Alistair," she choked and the light pretense had long since fled away-- her terrible, wonderful surprise entrance and witty one-liner forgotten as her hands flitted around his face, over his shoulders, around his head and back just to hold him-- "Alistair, Alistair."

Suddenly, he was laughing; bubbling with it like a river. But if water were joy, then he was a flood. He gripped her and lifted-- nearly wept with the familiar, wonderful, _perfect_  weight of her; just the _having_  her to hold was enough to stagger him with gratitude. 

"Thank you, Maker," he prayed into her neck, into her hair, not realizing he'd spoken aloud until he felt Nalia, too, unable to keep from laughing wetly. The sound of her, the sight of her, the feel of her was just exquisitely enough-- the perfect too much after too long hollow. 

He spun her, then, as he had at their wedding. The hall, the pillars, the windows-- it blurred around them, around her, and faded away. His goddess, his world, his _wife._ Home again. Finally, finally. 

From keyholes and doorjambs, every handmaid, groomsman, butler, and cook smiled, whispered, wept, and took note of the day they caught the King twirling his Queen around and around and around.


End file.
